


Before Midnight

by sterlinglee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sappy Ending, Secret Santa, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3063884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sky turns, the seasons turn over, and Iwaizumi and Oikawa track the movements of the stars.  Nothing is ever quite constant, but it's close enough.</p><p>
  <em>The grass is stiff with frost.  They walk in silence past the raked-over vegetable garden and up the back hill, footsteps crackling, and stand side-by-side at the top of an incline that used to seem much bigger.  Iwaizumi glances over but Oikawa’s already gone, eyes searching the sky with no hint of hurry, just a kind of reverent patience.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Midnight

_(summer)_

When Iwaizumi Hajime is eleven and the summer grass is dry under his bare feet, he races forward without much else on his mind. It’s his birthday and Oikawa is still a good arm’s length behind, and that’s enough. He puts a little extra kick into it and his reaching palm smacks the tree—“I win!”

Oikawa’s hand follows in the next second and as soon as he makes contact he’s spinning, face flushed and alight with challenge. 

“Best three out of five then—race you to the back garden!” he pants. Then they’re off again, ignoring Iwaizumi’s mom as she leans out the front door, protective instincts aroused by any mention of boys near her vegetables.

This is how it goes, in summer. Oikawa’s birthday is a month later and he soaks up sunlight over the long days, growing steadily into the brightness at his center. Iwaizumi grows brown and lean, and his nails are always dirty.

In front of the TV at Oikawa’s one evening, Iwaizumi almost sits on a magazine. Oikawa dives, snags it out from behind him, and slides it under the couch with such ostentatious secretiveness that Iwaizumi refuses to take the bait. Not that he can hold out for long.

“What’s that?”

Oikawa doesn’t bother to try and lead him off. “A secret.”

It isn’t hard to dig up the requisite frustration. “Yeah, so—what secret? If you’re gonna yank me around it better be something cool.”

“Come _on_ Iwa-chan all my secrets are—” Oikawa seizes on the chance to be righteously indignant, but Iwaizumi shoves at him and they have a half-distracted kick fight in front of the TV until their show comes on.

“Hssh,” Oikawa interrupts his own complaints to hold a finger to his lips, and Iwaizumi’s head drops back in resignation. 

Later, Oikawa drags him aside with the appropriate air of conspiracy, to tell him what it is he’s been hiding.

“Do we really have to be in the fort for this,” Iwaizumi says, but as he says it he’s thinking about where to find a good new branch, gently curving, to shore up that gap in the massed leaves and twigs overhead. Oikawa ignores him and holds up his magazine, open to a two-page spread.

“It’s my birthday present,” he says.

The first thing Iwaizumi notices isn’t the picture or the article but the corners, foxed and shiny from being turned, folded, thumbed over and over again in careful thought. Oikawa’s nails are still dirty from a certain event in the garden that got them a resounding earful from Iwaizumi’s mom. His fingers, pale, clever, grip the pages with otherwise hidden excitement. Beyond his fingertips is the sky.

Over both pages spreads a high-resolution image of a night sky ablaze with stars. The layered purples and blacks give an impression of shifting depth, and across the paler ribbon of the Milky Way, stars are gathered like a dusting of sugar.

“Your present—the magazine?” Iwaizumi probes. Oikawa shakes the magazine for emphasis, as if to shuffle stardust into the air between them.

“No—the meteor shower. The Perseids. I read in the article, they’re gonna be brightest right around my birthday!”

“Is this an alien thing—”

“It’s a _space_ thing! A really awesome cool thing okay, we’re gonna go and see ‘em!” Oikawa’s crowding him now but he doesn’t really mind because that’s a glow he’d know anywhere—a diffuse radiance, all one with keen eyes and dirty fingers and sunbleached hair. 

“When’s the best time?” He takes the magazine as carefully as an eleven-year-old boy is able. “When should we go and see?”

_(autumn)_

The sky is flat and gray during afternoon practice, heavy with the promise of rain. Iwaizumi Hajime has been fifteen for four months and even though his birthday comes before Oikawa’s he can’t shake the feeling that his best friend is heading forward far too fast. _This is supposed to be the year,_ Oikawa’s eyes are saying, even when the rest of him is worn and breathless from long practice. They’re in high school now, with older players and more funding for training trips—this is supposed to be the year that Ushijima Wakatoshi finds his throne was never too high for someone without the spark of genius to reach.

Every year since they were eleven, Oikawa and Iwaizumi have tracked the progress of the Perseid meteor shower and watched for it on clear July nights, shoving at each other and laughing in the warm air. This past summer, the Perseids peaked on a night when the moon was too bright to see them at all.

Iwaizumi knows—what Oikawa will remember about leaving Kitagawa Daichi is that they had their chance and they lost it. When the whistle blows for cleanup, he scoots Oikawa along before he can inadvertently offend any of the second-year reserve players, and they fall into the rhythm of packing and sweeping for a while. The gym throws a white-gold glow onto the lot outside, illuminating a brief stretch of bare pavement.

“Iwa-chan, you’re looking sour. Or is that your thinking face?”

“Both,” Iwaizumi mutters, lobbing a stray ball into the carriage and scowling as he realizes that he had a chance to bite back and missed it. “M’fine.”

Oikawa studies him. “Wasn’t gonna ask,” he says archly, but his expression is thoughtful.

“ _Good,_ ” Iwaizumi lays the growl on thick, trying to get Oikawa to relax. “Like I need you psychoanalyzing me.” He doesn’t need to look to know that Oikawa’s making his eyes go wide, betrayed and wounded. “And don’t make that face.”

The sky has turned a layered, smothering blue-black by the time they start their walk home. The massed clouds only break and pucker around the moon, which hangs low in a ring of yellowish light. Oikawa digs out a bag of sesame crackers, takes a few, and holds it out wordlessly between them. They eat and walk, and Iwaizumi checks his phone a few times before making a soft noise of disgust and shoving it back in his jacket pocket.

“If I didn’t know better,” Oikawa says lightly, “I’d say you’re mad ‘cause you wanted to see the Orionids.”

Iwaizumi chokes on a sesame cracker. Oikawa waits patiently while he swallows, takes a breath, and charges up his glare for immediate deployment.  
“You sound sure of yourself,” Iwaizumi says shortly, and motions for the bag again. They start walking again, falling into step after the first few paces. 

“…I wanted the weather to change, too.” Oikawa confides. “If the sky was clear we’d probably be able to see some good ones in the next couple nights.”  
“I know,” Iwaizumi says, forgetting that he was on a track to denial just a moment ago. “I thought—” He stops as Oikawa’s eyes go keen, the way they always do when he catches the scent of a potentially embarrassing confession.

“You thought…? Don’t leave me hanging, Iwa-chan.”

“I thought it’d maybe help you get your head out of your ass,” Iwaizumi grumbles. “Don’t know where I got that kind of optimism.”

“That’s _romantic,_ Iwa-chan,” Oikawa singsongs. In the growing dark he doesn’t notice Iwaizumi go suddenly, flaringly red. “When you go bald at twenty it’ll be because you were worrying about things like this, y’know.”

“About _you_ , asshole.” Iwaizumi wrests the bag from Oikawa’s unresisting hand and tips the crumbs into his mouth. Through his mouthful, he says, “You’ve been pushing it too hard at practice. Where are the rest of us gonna be if you overdo it and fuck yourself up, huh?”

“Do I see a, a bare patch right there on the back of your head? You need to be looking out for number one, Iwa-chan. Girls assume all kinds of things about a guy who’s losing his hair, y’know.”

“Get your damn hand off my head, your fingers are freezing.” Oikawa ducks away, laughing, and Iwaizumi chases him around the corner and down the street. When Oikawa spins to a halt under a streetlamp, rocking back on his heels, Iwaizumi draws up short—they almost collide. Oikawa’s expression turns glasslike for a moment, deceptively clear as he studies Iwaizumi’s face. In the next moment he lets half a smile sneak out, one of those looks he means for Iwaizumi only.

“I wasn’t going to get myself hurt or anything,” he says. “You know I’m careful. I have to be, ‘cause who knows where we’d all be if that high blood pressure finally caught up with you?”

He’s ready and waiting for the shove this time, and he skips nimbly back, laughing his annoying laugh. Iwaizumi bulls into him and knocks him breathless, fierce and giddy with his own relief. 

_(winter)_

By the time the first snow falls, their loss to Shiratorizawa at the Inter-High is months behind them, and, the team is already regrouping for the Spring High. It will be the last one, whatever happens. Iwaizumi and Oikawa are eighteen, easy, confident, strong as they’ll ever be. The days crystallize and shed splinters of light.

Outside Iwaizumi’s window, the snow is no longer falling through the evening black. He snags Oikawa’s study guide, neatly done out in three different pen colors and two kinds of highlighter, and checks his answers against it. He has half an eye on the clock at his bedside table.

Oikawa chews a pencil, taps at his calculator, breathes softly. Most of the time Iwaizumi has half an eye on him too, on the soft lines of his face under the lamplight. When the clock turns over to nine-thirty, he stands up.

“Finish that problem and get your coat,” he says, glaring at the wall over Oikawa’s head. If their eyes don’t meet he’ll be safe for a little while longer from what he has to say tonight. “Let’s—let’s go out a little early. Tonight’s already so clear.”

Oikawa opens his mouth and then apparently thinks better of it—he takes a few last jabs at his calculator, scratches down an answer, and follows Iwaizumi to the door. The Geminids, slow-moving and luminous, thick as a gentle snow, reach their peak on just two nights in mid-December.

The grass is stiff with frost. They walk in silence past the raked-over vegetable garden and up the back hill, footsteps crackling, and stand side-by-side at the top of an incline that used to seem much bigger. Iwaizumi glances over but Oikawa’s already gone, eyes searching the sky with no hint of hurry, just a kind of reverent patience.

“Hey—that’s one.” Iwaizumi points, his voice low. A pinpoint of light flares, arcs, and disappears beyond the tip of his finger.

“Two. And there—three.” Oikawa’s cheeks and nose are already red with cold. He’s got gloves on, but Iwaizumi didn’t think to bring any—he stuffs his hands in his pockets. Meteors fall, and Oikawa stands with his back to the darkened house, tracing their paths with steady hands.

After a few slow minutes, Iwaizumi looks up at the sky and asks the question he’s never asked before.

“Why d’you like it so much?” he says. “This kind of thing—” he’s not sure that’s clear enough so he stretches his arms wide to indicate, _all this._ The night and the wheeling sky. “Makes you feel small. Last I checked you didn’t like to feel small.” He glances at Oikawa with eyebrows raised.

“Speaking truth to power huh, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa turns to him, adding a mock-snarl to the words and giving up when Iwaizumi’s eyebrows retain their angle of non-amusement. He shrugs and makes a self-deprecating what-can-you-do face. “Psychology stuff sounds a little weird out of your mouth.”

“Aah, you know what I mean, you ass.” Iwaizumi wants to touch him. He wants to hear the answer to his question, which seems terribly important all of a sudden—he wants to hear it murmured against the place between his collar and hat where his skin is cold. He shoves a shoulder into Oikawa’s.  
“I mean, it’s all—” he lets his hands drop and puts them back in his pockets. He should have brought gloves. “Up there it’s spinning along damn fast, comets and stars and stuff. I guess I don’t mind that even if it makes me feel small, but only ‘cause the feeling doesn’t last that long. I can only hold it in my head for so long. But you…”

“Iwa-chan, I take it back,” Oikawa laughs. “Your head is like rocks but that’s some deep stuff right there.”

“Asshole,” Iwaizumi huffs out affectionately, the word hanging in his clouded breath. “It just—feels like we’re the smallest thing out there, practically. And it doesn’t make you dizzy?”

“It’s all circles,” Oikawa hums, more to himself than anything. “Circles and trajectories. I don’t mind. I like it here.”

Iwaizumi looks blankly at him to see if he’s fooling, but his face is tipped upwards and his hands are still. _I like it here._ A small place under a big sky.

“Take off your gloves,” he says.

“Iwa-chan?” But Oikawa’s hands are already moving, and he stuffs the gloves in his pocket with an exaggerated wring of his fingers.

“It’s not even that cold,” Iwaizumi snorts, and takes his hands.

“ _Iwa-chan,_ ” Oikawa says again, and this time it’s halfway to laughter and he’s the one searching Iwaizumi’s face for any hint of a joke. Iwaizumi glares at him, holds his hands tighter, and reels him in close enough for their breath to mingle faintly between them. He glares, feeling his face redden, until Oikawa gets it.

That flashing, dancing, restless look goes out of him, displaced by a moment of flat shock that lifts just as quickly into quiet joy. As Iwaizumi watches, something in Oikawa appears to settle, like for the time being he’s given up hunting around for the part of the equation he’s missed. He takes a step forward, knocking their knotted hands lightly against Iwaizumi’s chest. “…This is what you brought me out here for?”

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says, trying not to break into a lopsided, ridiculous smile. “You got a problem with it?”

Oikawa gives a helpless snort of laughter and plunges forward. He kisses Iwaizumi lightly, then rocks back—Iwaizumi tries to follow him, and then he pitches forward again and hooks his chin over Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Iwaizumi staggers back a step and catches them both.

“Are you _trying_ to make us both eat shit,” he grumbles, squeezing their still-clasped hands against his suddenly pounding heart. Oikawa is still laughing by his ear. His breath is warm and his shaking fit is getting more undignified by the second.

“You’re a romantic,” he gasps. “The snow, Iwa-chan, the stars—I can’t believe—”

“S’not funny.”

“It’s _funny._ ” Somehow, between the icy tang of the air and the mingled relief and happiness bubbling up behind Iwaizumi’s breastbone, he can still find it in himself to roll his eyes. Oikawa leans into him and he braces his feet, holds steady. Under them is the turning planet and above and below the sky flung wide and dappled with light, spinning, spinning.

Oikawa breathes softly against Iwaizumi’s jaw. After a while: “It’s snowing. I guess we should go in.”

Iwaizumi focuses for a second, squeezing Oikawa’s hands in the warm space between the two of them. Oikawa isn’t shivering yet.

He glances upward for just a moment, long enough to get a few lazily drifting snowflakes to the face. “In a minute,” he says. 

Soon it will be spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Haikyuu!! Secret Santa 2014. Merry Christmas, Johannah!


End file.
